Ashampoo Gadge It

At a Glance

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If you've been looking for a way to create your own standalone,
sidebar, or desktop gadgets linking to files, programs, or songs
and movies, Ashampoo's Gadge It has you covered.

At $15, Gadge It is obviously not going to be a full programming
or development system, such as Microsoft's Visual series, that
allows you to create completely free-form gadgets. What it does do
is create small applets that can launch a program, launch your
email program to send an email to a specific person, play a music
file, open a URL, open a folder, or quit the applet. These applets
may be in the form of a Windows Vista sidebar gadget, Window 7
desktop gadget, a standalone gadget for XP, Vista, or 7 (requires
Microsoft .NET 4.0), a simple menu that runs as an application, or
an HTML page that performs actions inside a browser.

The Ashampoo Gadge
It editor is much like any WYSIWIG graphics editor. You choose from
templates, can create multi-page gadgets, change the background,
add/remove/delete buttons, etc. and define the actions invoked by
the buttons. The program is very easy to use--you can literally
create a gadget in five minutes.

The big question is whether you actually need your own gadgets.
Windows covers every task they can duplicate with menus, shortcuts,
etc., just not as gadgets. If you simply must have a desktop gadget
rather than a shortcut to send an email, go for it. It's your
fifteen bucks.

At a Glance

Amazon Shop buttons are programmatically attached to all reviews, regardless of products' final review scores. Our parent company, IDG, receives advertisement revenue for shopping activity generated by the links. Because the buttons are attached programmatically, they should not be interpreted as editorial endorsements.